


I Ask No Leave of Thee

by ninhursag



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: BAMF Sara Lance, Cages, Captivity, F/M, Femdom, Forced Orgasm, Girl Saves Boy, Hell, Hell Trauma, Hurt/Comfort, Id Fic, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Leonard Snart Lives, Multi, Mutual Non-Con, Psychological Torture, Restraints, Something Made Them Do It, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 17:43:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19405078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: In which Sara discovers that Leonard has been in hell since he died at the Oculus and makes a terrible deal to get him out.More of a Gaiman- ish take on hell than some of the show canon. Also some apologies to Tam Lin.Pretty id ficcish.





	I Ask No Leave of Thee

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the h/c bingo square forced to hurt somebody and season of kink orgasm control with a side of caged/captivity.
> 
> Contains: onscreen mutual non-con of the someone made them do it variety. See end notes for more specifics.
> 
> Just off screen rape/assault and the aftermath of it.
> 
> Implied torture and abuse.

"Really?" Sara asked, her eyebrows up high and her head shaking already. "You're really doing this? Trying to talk me into placing bets with a literal devil?"

"I really am," said the demoness with the nasty smirk. She had bright red skin and hair and a forked tail to match her tongue. She looked smug as hell. "And if you want your boy toy back, you're really playing along."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm mostly in the girl department." Boy toy? Constantine? Not really a boy? Not Mick, definitely not a boy. Ray-- not Ray or Nate, a little too much boy there and-- "oh Jesus, no."

The demoness had flicked on a light. There in the middle of the room was a cage, not quite big enough for a tall man to stand up in. And in the middle of the cage, there was a tall man, curled in on himself. He was dressed in a torn jumpsuit, a bright prison orange.

And Sara knew him.

"No Jesus down here, sweetheart," the demoness said, smirking. Her eyes flashed sulfur yellow. "Just us. And you humans and your sad little souls. So, White Canary, like I said, want to play a game? Winner keeps your boy toy."

"He's dead," Sara whispered. Staring at that man, the lines of his body, dark hair close cropped and shot with gray, his clenched closed eyes. They'd be blue if they were open. Hauntingly blue, a color you'd dream about long after you saw it.

He was dead. She'd just barely missed seeing him die because that would have meant dying with him, in the explosion that took out the Oculus.

"Well obviously," the demoness said, like it was. "This is hell after all. Most of our inmates are dead. Present company excluded of course."

She still had dreams about the blue of his eyes and he'd been dead for years, with not even a grave to mourn at. "He's dead and he died saving us, saving everything and everyone. He doesn't belong here. Not here."

The demoness laughed. "Do you know, that's not our decision? Does one shining moment of self sacrifice really overcome a lifetime of lying, stealing and ruining what's not yours?"

"Yes," Sara said, sure of that much at least. "And it was a lot more than a shining moment. I was there."

She shrugged, bright red skin tight and crackling with the motion, like a burn victim's. "You don't have to convince me, Sara Lance. I'm not what's keeping him here. We don't keep any of you here." The demoness leaned in, close enough to smell the death stink of her skin. "You do that yourselves and he thinks he belongs here."

"So, what, I unlock the cage and off we go?" Sara asked dubiously. The demoness' smile brightens and she all but giggled.

"Oh no. The cage is unlocked, he can get out whenever he wants and he knows it." The demoness grinned and winked. "But, you see, right now he also thinks that if he leaves, his baby sister will have to take his place."

"So what's the game to get you to convince him otherwise?" Sara asked again. "I suck at cards."

"Well then we won't play poker for him. Here's one you don't suck at-- make him come and you can have him." The demoness winked and licked her lips lasciviously. 

"Are you serious?" Sara demanded. She wasn't graced with an answer.

Sara stared at the huddled figure in the cage, arms wrapped around himself, eyes still squeezed shut. He hadn't so much as looked up in the whole time they'd been speaking. Didn't seem aware of her or the demoness or anything around him. 

"What happens if I can't?" She asked frankly. Because she wasn't even sure she could touch him, like this. Never mind-- that.

"He stays here. And you get to leave with the knowledge that you failed him weighing on your soul." She tossed her red, red hair and fluttered those lashes. "One more reason to come here when you finally kick it for good, Sara Lance."

Sara thought about it, just for a moment. Then she took a deep, bracing breath, squared her shoulders and walked over to the cage containing the soul of one Leonard Snart, aka Cold. Deceased.

"You should have stuck with cards," the demoness snickered from behind her back. "This is a hard one. You'll have to convince him."

Sara pushed a piece of hair behind her ear and swung open the cage door. She was small enough to be able to step in easily. 

"Leonard," she said, as gently as she knew how. "Can you hear me? It's Sara."

And she blinked and the room shifted around her. They weren't in a small cage anymore, but the waverider brig. Gleaming surfaces of her ship around her.

He was wearing the same torn up prison jumpsuit but he uncurled carefully and his eyes snapped open. He stared at her. So blue. 

Blue like her final memory of him, staring panting from the first and last kiss she'd ever given him. She could still taste him on her lips. The sweetness of his mouth, careful ardor of his tongue. He'd been so careful before dying.

His arms stayed wrapped around his stomach. Grief swept through her, agonizing, twisted in with guilt. She'd mourned him, quietly, and put him away, a memory of almost was. Another loss.

He didn't say anything. Just stared at her. 

"Leonard," she said. Quiet. She stepped closer. He winced a little, but didn't back away. "I'm here to get you out."

That made him react. Raised eyebrows and a hint of a smile. "Pulling out this trick again? It's been a while." His voice sounded so familiar, careful and precise. Tired. They'd all been so frayed and tired by the end, right before he died. He was worse now. No rest for hell's inmates. "It won't work this time either, I know no one's coming."

Sara flinched. They hadn't come. This wasn't a rescue mission, her being here, this was an accident. "I didn't know you were here," she whispered. "I didn't know there was a possibility I could come and get you."

That made him look at her more carefully. "Oh, that's good. Inventive. What's your plan to get me then?" His voice was disdainful, confident. His body was anything but. "What with me being dead and in hell."

She shrugged. "Well the demon I was talking to made a suggestion, but honestly, I figured I'd brazen it out and see what happens. That's worked for me before."

He blinked. Then again, posture loosening just a little. Then, abruptly, he laughed, really and out loud. "Ok, let's say I believe you're actually Sara. What did they tell you to do?"

She sighed, stared at her hands and looked at the wall behind him. He waited patiently. "She said I could have you back if I made you come," she finally spat out.

Another blink from him. "Well that's going to be a problem," he finally said, slowly, tightening up into a ball again.

"What do you mean?" She asked. She could make a good dozen guesses off the top of her head as to why that was an awful idea but you'd think staying in hell would outweigh them.

"It's not going to work, Sara," he said in that same sure way. "Can you-- if you're really Sara, can you not tell Lisa or Mick about this? Just let them keep thinking whatever they were before?"

"Excuse me?" She demanded. "You're just giving up? You do get that you're only here because you think you deserve to be here?"

He shrugged openly, as much as he could from the floor with knees pulled to chest. "Well. I do? I'm a bad guy. Supervillain, some might say. I killed a man in Reno just to watch him die?"

"Thanks for the insight, Johnny Cash," she sighed. "I killed a whole band of guys in Reno because my bosses got paid. Do I belong in the next cage over?"

He winced, "don't fucking say that, you have no idea what you're saying," he spat.

She frowned and her voice came out harsher than she'd meant it to. "How about Mick? He was right with you through your worst. You ready to sign him over to be a demon's chew toy?"

There was a quick, firm headshake. "Just stop it, Sara. I'm not an idiot, I understand relative evil. You need to understand that I can't help you help me."

"What the hell does that even mean, you can't--" she stopped abruptly. Hand to her mouth. Right. The demoness had told her outright. "If you do anything to leave, you think they're going to hurt Lisa. You know she's not here, right? She's alive and well and raising hel-- figurative hell in Central City."

He made a face. Stared at some fixed point over her shoulder and tucked his hands under his knees. "I want to believe you're really Sara Lance and not a demonic illusion sent to fuck with me. I'd say I'm 90% of the way there. I'm not going to bet my sister on it, though."

"So what am I supposed to do? Let's assume walking away isn't an option."

"You can always erase your own memory," he suggested. Calm as hell about it. Her mind flashed denial. "Don't look so pissed. It's a viable solution, you won't remember to feel bad and then you won't have to lie about anything."

"Shit. Len. Just stop doing that. That doesn't help," she hissed. 

He pulled one hand away from under his knee and scrubbed his face with it. Then-- "Have you ever read Tam Lin?" he asked abruptly. 

"I'm not really a reader, but the name sounds familiar," she said, startled. "Why, what's the plan?"

He looked distant again, a far away expression on his face. That handsome face she'd seen on his otherworld doppelganger, in the occasional dream. Here and now, too damn beautiful for this place. "It's a ballad-- an old one. Long story short. Girl goes walking through the deep dark woods where she doesn't belong one day because she feels entitled to go wherever she chooses, she meets boy, she falls for boy, she finds out boy is enslaved by the queen of faerie. Rescues boy. They live happily ever after.*

"Ok, I'll bite," Sara said softly. "How's she do that?"

He gave her a sharp, frowning shrug. "By not losing sight of the task and not letting go of him no matter what happened. No matter what he said or did. No matter if he fought her. No matter what lies he told."

"What's going to happen?" she asked. She finally made herself get up, close the rest of the distance between them.

He smelled alive, sweaty, the faint irony tang of dried blood. His body was warm, real. He flinched when she touched him, hard. Not a ghost or just a lost soul even if he was that too. "I can't help you," he whispered. "You have to do it anyway. I'll struggle against you if I can and you have to do it anyway. That's the deal you made." 

Do what? Oh, right, make him come. And Sara was the one who flinched then. You have to do it anyway.

"Well," he said and his cold blue eyes were so close, the even planes of his face. The sweat on his skin. "Actually, you don't have to do it at all. What you should do is walk away."

There was a noise from outside the brig. Leonard shuddered. "It's showtime," he mumbled. "Sara, leave."

"No, no, no, son, that's no way to talk to a lady. Sara, be my guest and stay." There's a man stepping through the forceshield of the brig like it wasn't there, smiling a little. Sara's never met him, knows she probably isn't really meeting him now. Hopes the real version of his soul is suffering here somewhere.

But she knows the face of Lewis Snart. Leonard's father.

"Come on, kid, time to learn some important life lessons," the Lewis demon said.

And they're not on the waverider anymore. They're in a house, a regular old suburban house. It's in bad shape, torn up green carpet, peeling wallpaper, an unidentified brown stain on the ceiling.

The person she's standing next to, the soul, is not a man of 43, tall strength and lean muscle to go with a handsome face. It's a boy, lanky and coltish, hands too big for him, wiry buzzed hair the only thing that's the same. That and his eyes, the endless blue.

He's terrified, the child. He's in a room with a monster. Two monsters. Well one of the monsters is on his side. She stands up casually and cracks her knuckles, loosening up her shoulders.

"I love lessons," she said. "Wanna learn how to dance?" Because she's going to brazen this one out, fuck yeah.

The Lewis demon grinned at her. "Sure," he said. "But beating on me doesn't get him out of here. It's just a brief interruption in a well deserved lesson."

There's a blink and they're in an alley. Filthy and graffitied, the stink of trash, piss and vomit drifting on the air. Someone is crying.

It's a girl, young, maybe a little older than Len looks right now, but not much. She's wearing a skimpy looking dress. Her makeup is a runny mess, smeared all over her face with tears, snot and sweat. 

"Please don't, please don't, please don't," she begs. Lewis is grinning. 

"See, I'm with the CCPD, girlie. So you'd better be ready to show me and my boy a good time, or you're going to jail for soliciting," he says cheerfully. 

Sara turns around and there's Len, looking about as young and scared as the girl. No makeup or tears but he's quaking like a leaf in the wind. There's a gun in his hands, cocked and aimed but there's no way he's going to hit anything on purpose with it, the way he's shaking.

"Stop," he whispers, mostly a plea, like the girl's plea. "I don't wanna… it's ok, just leave her alone."

"Oh, Leo, come on," the Lewis demon says, laughing, "we all know you don't have the guts to shoot me, not yet."

"Please save me, please help me," the girl whimpers, looking right at Leonard. Sara can hear his teeth knocking together. 

"Just let her go, dad, come on," he says almost too quiet to hear. "You don't need her."

There's a sharp, amused laugh, and the demon's lunging at Len, the girl is weeping hysterically, Len's jumping frantically back gun dropping out of his hands, and just like that Sara's in motion.

She gets in a good punch before things blink again and she's somewhere else. It's another cell. She's a cop's daughter enough to recognize it's a holding cell at a police station, nowhere long term. 

Leonard was sitting on a bench, hands cuffed to leg irons, looking exhausted and bruised.

"Did that happen?" she asked softly.

He shrugged and stared down at his knees. "No blonde badass assassins showed up to save the day, so yeah that happened. I didn't shoot him, obviously." He didn't volunteer anything else.

She sat down on the bench next to him and wordlessly put her hand on his. He flinched a little, his expression more startled than scared. Then his fingers closed around hers. 

"If you're going to do this, can you just do it?" he said, cool as anything, while there was the faintest hint of a tremor in his fingers.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she said back, as gently as she could.

He rolled his eyes and jerked his hand away, though he couldn't move it far. "Then what's the point of your being here? To tempt me into fucking up?"

"To get you out of here," she said. "I won't let go. I won't."

He sneered, the drawl in his voice in full force. "You don't even know what I really am, so don't you say that. Do you know why I'm here right now?" 

"Here in hell? Here in the universe? You've got to give me more than that, Snart," she told him. She reached back for his fingers and he relaxed them in her grip.

Gave her a long, serious look. "I killed people, because I didn't care what happened to them. Security guards. Bystanders. People who tried to walk off my crew. I scammed people and stole from them."

She nodded. "Do you think I don't know that? People change, Leonard. You did. You saved Mick and me and the world."

"I saved you and him, the world was… it wasn't like that. Me falling in love with you or Mick doesn't mean I get a pass, it doesn't work like that," he said. "Monsters can still love people, doesn't make them not monsters." His fingers tightened around hers. 

She sighed. And he smiled, not even sad. Just resigned. He was under her hands and still so far away she couldn't touch him. "It's ok, Sara. I don't expect anything. You feel guilty, I get it. You don't owe me anything."

There was nothing she could say. That he would hear. She could only win that fight after she got him out of here. "From the second I knew you were here, I was coming for you," she said quietly. 

He shrugged and turned away.

The world shifted and they were in a timeship. An unfamiliar one. She saw Chronos, who was Mick, Len's first and best and always. Mick who would know better than her what to do if he were here. Wearing his armor and gun.

Mick who had been brainwashed and tortured and turned and hurt Len when he had.

"You left me to rot," Chronos-Mick said to Len, who was handcuffed to a pillar with nasty looking cuffs. "Your oldest friend, your partner. Everything that happened to me was because you chose some people you barely knew over me. Why don't you deserve the same thing? Why would anyone come for you?"

Leonard shuddered where he was, trapped in more ways than one. "I do," he said simply. "Of course I do. No one should come."

Sara stepped in quietly, gentler than she had before. "You gave your life for his when it came down to it. Literally."

Len looked back at her, and shrugged sharply. "Doesn't matter. If he says I owe more, I owe more."

"That's right, Birdie," Mick who wasn't Mick at all said with a fake cheer. "I'm the one he owes, after all."

"You're not Mick. Mick would be first in line to rip Leonard out of here," she said. "He'd probably already have him bundled over his shoulder and gone and not even bother playing around with this shit."

Len snickered. "I could see that happening," he admitted. 

Demon Mick made a face. "It doesn't matter anyway," he said. "You won't meet the terms of the agreement and you're going to be staying with us for a very, very long eternity, Lenny. And-- if you do win-- Lisa takes your place when you die. Don't forget that."

Len squeezed his eyes shut. No sneer, no smirks, no defenses. He looked almost as painfully young and vulnerable as the boy she'd seen in the alley, terrified and holding a gun on his own father.

"It's not true, Leonard," Sara said, gently. "They don't get to decide that. What happens to Lisa is up to Lisa."

"I can't risk that," he whispered. "How can I risk that?"

The Mick demon smiled and winked at her. The world shifted.

Sara found herself in a long hallway, doors on all sides. It looked abandoned and endless, plain white walls and cheap greenish-grey carpeting. Institutional lighting. No windows. She was wearing her black league armor, knives all in place, sweaty already but covered and secure. 

No sign of Len or anyone else.

Then a door swung open and a man she thought she should know but couldn't quite place strode out into the hall. He was humming brightly to himself, grinning. Zipping and buttoning up his jeans as he walked.

She frowned and he seemed to notice her. Grinned and gave a smarmy little wink. "Are you next?" he asked. "He's a nice ride."

There wasn't really time for thought, just instinct possessing her, the low, humming rage and urge to destroy spilling out into action. She punched him. Hard enough to knock him back. She followed with another punch. A kick to the ribs. Again.

Again. He-- whoever he or it was-- never even got a hit back. She just kept hitting, kicking, breaking.

No weapons. Just her hands and feet.

It had been a while since she'd brute force beaten someone to death, but it wasn't like the know how had gone away. Besides, the guy wasn't even real.

"He's mine," she said out loud, to no one in particular. "He's not a fucking ride. There's no fucking next. He's mine."

She wiped the blood off her knuckles and boots and then walked through the open door into a room, small and stuffy, windowless, furnished with a chair, a desk and a sturdy looking metal framed bed, which had Len on it. The lights overhead buzzed an institutional fluorescent. 

He was a visible mess, wearing nothing but blood and bruises, smeared over scars and skin. She didn't think she'd ever seen him naked, not even a glimpse of skin when they were in close quarters on the waver rider. Cuffed to the bedframe, the metal gleaming on his wrists. 

His legs were tied apart and there was blood smeared down his thighs. She swallowed hard. The rage that she had harnessed to beat someone to death rose up like bile. No where to put it now.

"Len," she whispered, taking a step toward him, reaching out involuntarily. 

He flinched from just the sound of her voice. "Damn you, just leave," he ground out, like his throat was covered in gravel and glass, he shifted away, wincing visibly and buried his face in the bare mattress under him. "Go away." 

She didn't, couldn't. "No," she whispered, steadfast. "I won't leave you here." She sat down on the bed next to him, the stench of sex mingling with blood. She reached out and touched his shoulder with as careful a hand as she could with her body still lit up from adrenaline. He flinched again, then went so still, like a small animal in a trap. She bit her lower lip, watching him try his hardest to make himself disappear when he couldn't. 

Remembering what that felt like when she-- no. She couldn't lose herself, couldn't punch the wall, couldn't start screaming.

This was his hell. Not hers. She didn't need to just do whatever she was told she was supposed to. She didn't need to just take this.

Wait-- she'd been going with that, letting whoever was controlling what they saw-- the demons, Len's urges to punish himself, to scare her off, whatever it was-- dictate the setting. Did she need to? Did she need to go wherever this was sending her, under whatever terms were dictated?

Did it need to be like this...

"Come on, Lance," she muttered to herself. "If you can't win, change the rules?"

Len's body under her hands shifted and he let out a slow, long exhale. "I'm ok with that. These rules suck."

She thought, imagined -- focused-- let the world respond to her thoughts and the room around them shifted. It was easier than she'd expected.

They were still together, on a bed, her hands on his naked skin, but everything else was different. A big, heavy piece of furniture built of a warm carved wood. Curtained off with filmy gauze hangings, translucent enough to let the natural sunlight in, but opaque enough to hide them from the outside world. 

Somewhere nearby, she could hear and smell the warm sounds of summer, buzzing insects and waving grass, rustling leaves. 

Len's wrists and ankles were tied with silk, or something like it, tight but gentle, nothing that would mark him. But hard enough to hold him if he tried to get away. 

He lay on his back, knees spread a little, the expanse of his warm, clean skin visible. The scarring on him was... extensive, but mostly long healed. She didn't focus on it. His eyes were half closed. He sighed and looked up at her.

"Who is this supposed to be easier for?" he muttered.

"Both of us, I hope," she said quietly. 

"This is still all fake, you know," he said, cool and calm, like he was fully dressed and they were splitting a beer in the waverrider's galley. "We're still in hell. I'm still dead, and you're hanging out with my damned soul. You can clean me up, but the second you leave, it's back to the torture rounds."

"Actually, it's not, since you're leaving with me," she said, forcing equal certainty into her voice. "And I'm going to find a real place, just like this one, and keep you there for as long as it takes until you know you're safe again." Then she leaned over and very steadily, kissed him on the mouth. 

He made a noise, soft and questioning, but his lips parted a little and he didn't move back. His skin was clean, but he tasted sour, ash and old blood. Or maybe that was her. Old grief, pain, guilt. She cupped his cheek with her hands and kissed him again, with every bit of gentleness that she had.

He made a breathy, whining sound and let her slip in her tongue. Tasted her back. He didn't taste like a dead man, didn't feel like someone who had just been violently hurt. In a way, he hadn't been, at least not just then. The things she was seeing were half memory, half emotional torture, on loop. But she could feel the warmth of his body, the thrum of his pulse the erratic push of his breath as if he were alive.

"Tell me," he whispered. "What is it going to be like in your real, safe place?"

"I'm going to take you and keep you," she told him, soft and sure. "You're going to be mine and no one else is going to touch you. No one else is going to so much as breathe your air or put their eyes on your body."

His eyes went wide and there was something unfamiliar in them. Shocked. Urgent. "No one?" he whispered against her lips. 

"No one you don't beg for," she conceded easily. "It will be just like this. Warm and safe and you can have whatever you want-- books, cards, engineering schematics, gemstones, pretty, priceless pictures to hang on your wall. But safe."

"Just you," his eyebrows rose and he smiled faintly. 

"Just me, unless you don't want that. No one you don't want," she agreed readily. She kissed him again, deeper this time. There was a sweetness under everything else. The sense of what he would taste like if she kept her promise to him. 

She kissed his mouth, the curl of his cheek, the bare long line of his neck. The scars that began just around the collarbone. Broken glass and knives. Old burns. Cigarettes and spark plugs. She was shaking as much with rage as anything else. 

"Please don't," he whispered, almost soundlessly. "Please just don't. Not right now."

"You know I have to," she murmured back. Her tongue curled around a particularly nasty keloid scar over his right nipple. "It's not a choice right now." 

He whimpered. Arched toward her, not away. "Stop it. Sara." His voice was still quiet, none of the usual affected drawl.

She wanted to cover her ears. This was always going to happen. There was nothing in his body that was saying no, just the soft, steady words. He'd told her he'd lie, that she shouldn't listen. But it was unbearable.

She kissed down his navel, the sharp jut of hip bone. His skin felt so warm, tasted real, like the summer day it sounded like outside. Sunscreen and grass.

Kissed his inner thighs, the deep, rough feel of old and new scar tissue.

Somewhere along the line, probably when she sucked the full length of his cock into her mouth, he stopped begging, the words reduced to noises. His clever, beautiful mouth reduced to incoherent sounds, half animal.

Hands and feet tied so perfectly, tighter as he fought harder. She knew this game better than cards, the way to make a man lose his mind. Where to tongue, over the slit of his cock. Where to press her mouth in the skin of his balls.

She didn't know his body's secrets, never had this chance with him when he was alive, but she took her time learning them. The way he shivered when she sank her teeth gently around a nipple. The way he arched back into her nails. The way it sounded. 

But it wasn't enough, none of it. She watched him do it, all will and nerve and misery pushing back against her touch when he couldn't physically. The way he bit his own lip bloody. The way he squeezed his eyes shut and pictured God knew what unsexy thoughts. Ruined his own orgasm.

"Stop," he muttered. "I can't, I can't, I can't." 

He stank of sweat, body trembling. Hers was too, from all of it, everything beautiful and awful about this.

"You have to. Let it go, Lenny," she whispered, tonguing the rim of his ear. And down again, again, again, the head of his cock, and down over his balls, down past the delicate skin of perineum. Pushed his knees up so she could circle a wet finger around the rim of his hole.

"I can't," he hissed. "Won't." 

And she reared back suddenly, up on her knees, looming over his prone, bound body.

"Lenny," she said and put both hands on his face. She suddenly knew what she had to do, to say, to make him believe and it was horrible.

"Sara," he whispered back, eyes snapping open. "No. I said no."

"If you don't come," she told him, forcing his chin up, forcing him to meet her eyes, to stare him down. To radiate truth at him. That this would really happen. He was vulnerable and she had to make this work, be colder than him. Demon brutal. "If you manage to hold back, Lenny, I'm going to find Lisa and I'm going to tie her up and drag her to an occultist and make her soul a demon's playground. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"

He whimpered and tried to push away, helpless when the bindings held him hard. She'd made them after all, perfect for this, soft like silk, but strong like metal. She sank her nails into his skin, hard, drawing him back to her. "Do you hear me? She won't even have to die to get to hell."

"I don't believe you," he mumbled, trying to hide his eyes, cover them, look away. She tried to remember when she'd last hated herself this much. Pushed the thought away, no time, no time, this wouldn't be for nothing.

She pressed her fingers against his eyelids and forced them open. He gasped. "You going to bet her life on it? Me and my bloodlust versus her brain. How is that working for you right now?" 

The veins in his forehead stood out. He suddenly went limp in her hands.

"Please no," he said, soft, exhausted, spent from fighting. "I'll do whatever you want."

Her jaw was sore and her lips felt raw. She was almost as tired and used up as he looked right then but she couldn't show it. Couldn't let her see how much he was affecting her. "You know what I want. Let. It. Go. Leonard."

And she wrapped her hand tight around the length of him and that was enough in the end, a few twists and a flick of the wrist and he was spilling semen all over his own spread out thighs and belly.

"Mine," she said, and sank her teeth down into the tender hollow of his hips.

There were tears all over his face. Maybe hers, blurring her eyes. His body trembled under her hands. He was sobbing.

"I will never, never, never let you go," she told him and she was sobbing too. And his fingers tightened where they could get her skin.

"Kiss me?" he asked and she breathed out in terrible relief. 

And she did, wrapping her hand around the back of his neck, tender and urgent, tasting his blood and tears. He kissed back, all tongue and heat.

"I'm sorry," he whispered into her mouth, like he was the one who was supposed to say that. "I had to, you know that? I had to."

"Me too," she whispered back.

The world shifted and she stood at the gate, the literal gate of hell. He was in front of her, standing casually, like he owned the ground his feet were on. Next to him was the red demon woman. She smiled at Sara, showing her teeth, gleaming.

Put her hand on Len's shoulder like that was ok. Sara growled and she pulled it off. Good.

Wait, not good. Len was talking.

"Actually, I think I'm going to stay here." He looked cool and steady, smiling at her. Nothing behind the flat mirror of his eyes, all the pain and desperation erased. "See, now that you've helped me out, I've gotten an offer to take the step up to full fledged demon instead of damned soul and that sounds like fun to me."

Her gut twisted. Skin pinked. And then she remembered what he'd said. "Yeah, no. You're not going to do that. You're coming with me."

"Going to force me again, Sara?" There was a hint of a sneer around his beautiful mouth.

She shrugged and just smiled right back at him, putting all the affection and sincerity she had into it. "If I need to. Every single time. You're not staying here."

And she reached out and grabbed his hand, holding on hard and pulled him to her. And he gripped back. She kissed him, wet and deep.

And the world shifted.

She dragged him through fire and darkness and he pushed her forward. Behind them, she could hear the demon woman scream out her rage.

"You'll pay for this, Sara Lance. You're cursed for this," she howled. "He was mine."

"Don't listen," Len whispered. 

And Sara looked at him, at his stark, beautiful face, and smiled. "I know. You never were."

On the waverider, in the real world, she knelt down by his naked, living, breathing body and wept. He was curled in on himself, eyes squeezed shut. Shorn hair drenched in sweat, body shaking.

"Gideon," she called to the AI urgently. "Get Mick. Get him here now."

She wrapped herself around him, trying to keep him warm, thoughts and fears and disbelief everywhere.

There was an annoyed grumble from the hall and a, "boss, what's so damned important, I was sleeping," before stopping abruptly, the breath shoved out of him.

And Len was the one who said, "Mick," in such confused disbelief. He didn't try to sit up or move away from her. "Really?"

Mick said, slowly, "not a gangbanging-- dopple-- copy?"

"No," Sara said. "This is him, our him. I got him out of hell."

And Mick cursed and stumbled forward toward them. "Well what the hell was he doing there?" he demanded.

And Len laughed and buried his head in Sara's lap and muttered, "being damned, why is that actually so hard to believe?"

Mick's hands were shaking but he wordlessly slid his coat off his shoulders and wrapped it around Len's body, which Len allowed without protest. Then he sat down hard next to them.

"Idiot," he hissed and grabbed one of Len's hands while Sara kept the other one. Then he looked at Sara. "Let's burn down hell."

And she giggled and then so did Leonard, who said, "sure sounds toasty. We could roast marshmallows."

They took him to her quarters instead and Sara made her plans. Somewhere warm and bright and safe like she'd promised.

**Author's Note:**

> Sara has to make Leonard come as part of a deal with hell and Leonard has to resist her by whatever means he has available. Both would prefer to be doing almost anything else. They'd be interested in each other under other circumstances.
> 
> You can find me on dreamwidth @ https://ninhursag.dreamwidth.org/


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